Postal Service collects food for the hungry

Communities across Iowa will play a role in the nation’s largest food drive today. Postal workers will help restock area food banks as part of the 15th annual "Stamp Out Hunger Day." Barb Prather is executive director of the Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo, one the many organizations that will receive the collected items.

Prather says it’s easy for people to take part, as all they have to do is fill a grocery bag with food and put it outside their door by 9:30 A.M., then the letter carrier or a volunteer will pick it up and get it to the food bank. Letter carriers collected more than 50,000 pounds of non-perishable food items in the Cedar Valley last year. Prather says this year’s goal is to do one pound better.

She says, "Hunger isn’t going away." Organizers are hoping for a warm and sunny day across Iowa, but Prather says bad weather won’t stop the event from happening. She says it’s on rain-or-shine, but if there is rain, please use plastic bags, not paper.

Stamp Out Hunger Day was started in 1993 by the National Letter Carriers Association. Since its inception, the nation’s 230,000 letter carriers have collected more than 765-million pounds of food.